Let's take a little bit of time to talk about having only one machine and having all the users send and receive e-mail within only one machine.
What makes a machine a mail host server? No special steps are required to set up a mail server that is only serving mail for local users. The user must have an entry in the password file or in the namespace, and the user should have a local home directory (for checking the ~/.forward file) for mail to be delivered. For this reason, home directory servers are often set up as the mail servers.
The mail.local program automatically creates mailboxes in the /var/mail directory the first time a message is delivered to a user's account. You do not need to create individual mailboxes for your mail clients. However, if you delete a user from the machine, be sure to take the time to remove his/her mailbox from /var/mail or archive it for future reference.
A mailbox is a single file that contains e-mail for a particular user. Mail is delivered to the system where the user's mailbox resides, which can be on a local machine or a remote server. A mail server is any system that maintains user mailboxes in its /var/mail directory.
Mail should always be delivered to a local file system so that the user agent can pull mail from the mail spool and store it readily in the local mailbox. If your NFS mounting the /var/mail directory, include the actimeo=0 (zero) option when mounting mail from an NFS server for mailbox file locking to work properly.
If you installed Solaris 10 11/06 then you need to be aware of a property setting in the manifest file.
When you install Solaris 10 11/06 you can choose to install either an open system or a closed system.
If you want to switch between the two you can use the netservices command.
man netservices for details
If you choose to install a closed system then sendmail will only receive e-mail from the local system. If you want sendmail to receive e-mail from remote systems then type the following commands:
# svccfg -s sendmail setprop config/local_only = false
# svcadm refresh sendmail
# svcadm restart sendmail
If you want to accept mail only from a local machine and you are on an older version Solaris, then:
Look up the procedure for "How to Manage Mail Delivery by using an Alternate Configuration of sendmail.cf on http://docs.sun.com under Solaris 10, System Administrator, Network Services.
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